“Some people called me crazy.”
John Hunter Nemechek is back in the NASCAR Cup Series but he took an awfully unprecedented pathway to Legacy Motor Club and its No. 42 team.
Nemechek spent the 2020 season in the Cup Series with Front Row Motorsports after spending his formative years in the Truck Series with just one Xfinity Series campaign. He was 23 years old, and while he finished 27th in the final standings, his underlying metrics suggested he maximized the potential of his car that season.
He could have remained with Front Row Motorsports but opted to return to the Truck Series with Toyota and Kyle Busch Motorsports, wanting to validate his conviction that he was a championship driver who warranted championship equipment.
He won seven truck races and seven Xfinity races over the past three years and was rewarded with a ride with a Legacy Motor Club team that appears to have the same level of resources as the other Toyota teams.
But again, this isn’t the trajectory most Cup careers take, from Trucks to Cup, back to Trucks and then Xfinity and Cup again.
“The last three years being in the Truck Series, the Xfinity Series, winning a bunch of races, it has definitely felt really good,” Nemechek said on Wednesday at Daytona 500 Media Day. “It was a revamp, I guess you could say. It was a gamble – some people called it; I think. Some people called me crazy for doing it.
“The goal was to be back here in a seat on Sundays with an organization that I feel like can contend for wins and championships in the future and being able to put yourself with a team like that is huge. Not only for myself, but Toyota, TRD and all of our partners, who stepped back with me from the Cup Series to kind of move back up.
“I’m excited about 2024. I’m excited to get rolling here and see what we can do as a team.”
Nemechek is the son of NASCAR veteran Joe, and is a driver that has always seemed destined to reach the highest levels, from his quick taking to the Allison Legacy cars and then a really successful stint in Super Late Models, that included wins in the Snowflake 100 and Snowball Derby.
He took just as quickly to the Truck Series.
But NASCAR racing isn’t always about the results but also chemistry and collaboration with a team, and that’s where Nemechek feels he has matured the most over his journey, realizing all the things a driver must bring to the table.
“You just grow up in general,” he said. “You mature in different ways – inside the race car and outside of the race car. This coming in is really like my second full-time Cup year. You have learned a lot in the past. You get humbled very quickly normally when you come into the Cup Series the first time.
“You have the thought that you’re going to go in and set the world on fire right away and sometimes that’s not the case. It’s definitely humbling coming to the Cup Series after winning a bunch of truck races and Xfinity races and different things of that sort. It’s also very difficult. There’s reason why these guys are here and the 40 spots that they’re in competing at the highest level every single week.
“We thoroughly enjoy racing each other as hard as we possibly can every single week. It doesn’t matter if you’re racing for first or if you’re racing for 25th, you’re racing as hard as you possibly can.”
Nemechek says he learned just as much from driving the underfunded Front Row car as he did in his stint driving top shelf chassis as KBM and Joe Gibbs Racing the past three years.
“We finished top-10 multiple times, had some really good superspeedway runs,” Nemechek said. “We did a lot with what we had at Front Row at the time. I’m super grateful for that opportunity. I don’t regret anything about that. I think that there’s certain things I would change looking back on just about path-wise and different things of that sort if I had the opportunity.
“But at the same time this opportunity that I was dealt I’ve enjoyed every single aspect of it, learning as much as I possibly can. I think the tough years, the good years, you learn something from every single one of them and you probably learn more from the tough years than you do the good years.”
And it all pretty much worked out.
“I definitely think it played out pretty good,” Nemechek said. “A lot of wins under our belt in the last three years and being able to step back and win some races and try to get back to the Cup Series and now we are here.
“It definitely seems like the plan, or path, has worked so far. Now we just have to go execute here in the Cup Series and try to make a home here.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
